For anyone who wants to attain the vaunted title of "being well-read," it's more about breadth than depth. (As for feeling well-read, read the postscript.)

To "feel" well-read in literature, it's all about the categories, not the books themselves. Read a few books in a few different genres, time periods, points of views. I've thrown in a few controversial books, just so you know what all of the fuss is about.

Here's how you can feel like a regular literati:

Western Classics (Ancient & Modern): to give you a good foundation for the who's who of Western literature.

The Odyssey (Homer): epic of a dude who just can't get home without a little help from the gods. (Extra credit if you read the Iliad, too!)

A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens): the quintessential story of the French Revolution, love, and longing.

Pride & Prejudice (Jane Austen): the story that started the "hate at first sight turning into love" trope.

Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy): Very long. Very melodramatic. Very Russian. Very classic!

Dystopia: the stuff of our worst fears and nightmares.

Nineteen-Eighty-Four (George Orwell): the book that introduced "doublethink" into our lexicon.

Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan): the book that inspired a movie and furor in the Asian American community about stereotypes and Tan's possible self-loathing. (For a less controversial read, try Ha Jin's Waiting--and yes, there's a lot of longing and waiting there.)

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (Julia Alvarez): how four sisters start to forget their Spanish and their native homeland of the Dominican Republic.

Non-Western Classics (Ancient): if Westerners get theirs, so should the rest of the world.

Ramayana (India): this is THE Hindu epic. Full stop.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms (China): a bit of Chinese history, highly romanticized and dramatized. Kind of like "A World Turns."

Non-Western Classics (Modern): the stuff that you should read to feel worldly and well-read. (More applicable if you're from the U.S. or Western Europe.)

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez): this novel single-handedly legitimatized Latin American literature in modern times. Too bad you don't know who he's talking about half of the time.

To Live (Yu Hua): getting banned in China just adds to its street cred.

Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut): some say Slaughterhouse-Five is his best, I say this one.

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller): come and see what the catch-22 is. I promise you, it's gorgeously ironic.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams): you kill two birds with two stones here: sci-fi and satire.

This is where I reach the end of my endurance. I haven't even gotten into the non-fiction stuff, but alas ... I must eat.

With this list, you'll feel like you can dominate the Trivial Pursuit literature section! Life is good.

Postscript: since this question is more about sentiment than reality ... I hate to break it to you, but if you're truly a well-read person, you will never feel well-read. They're always on the lookout for their next book--that category that they're missing--to add to their impressive list. It's a Sisyphean goal, really.

If you feel well-read, you're probably not.

This questionoriginally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions: